Review of Barbara Monroe’s Plateau Indian Ways With Words: The Rhetorical Tradition of the Tribes of the Inland Northwest

Daniel Cole

Monroe, Barbara. Plateau Indian Ways With Words: The Rhetorical Tradition
of the Tribes of the Inland Northwest. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P,
2014. 288 pp.

Readers who look
only at the title would be mistaken to dismiss as too parochial
Barbara Monroe’s Plateau Indian Ways With Words. Its feet
planted in both Indigenous Studies and Composition Studies, the book
offers teachers at all levels a great deal that is generalizable and
adaptable from its close examination of the rhetorical practices of
Plateau Indians, a term that covers an array of Indian nations whose
homelands center in central and eastern Washington state. This group
is not exactly obscure; notable members include Sherman Alexie
(Spokane/Coeur d’Alene), Chief Joseph (Nez Perce), and Kennewick
Man (Colville). Though Monroe’s book does not mention the
Kennewick
Man controversy, this case in which Indian knowledge became
validated over the erroneous assertions of Western scientists points
to a principle that animates Monroe’s book: Eurowesterners could
learn much from serious and respectful engagement with Indian
epistemologies and intellectual traditions.

Its title an homage
to Shirley Brice Heath’s groundbreaking book, Ways With Words,
this book found its impetus, writes Monroe, in a sense often
expressed by teachers that there is “something special” about
Plateau Indian student writing, but they “were hard-pressed to
explain exactly how, much less why” (xvii). Monroe believed that
finding an answer to those questions might lead to more effective
pedagogies to engage this population, which generally scores low on
standardized tests and other modes of evaluation. Thus, Plateau
Indian Ways With Words draws upon approximately 940 writing
samples from Plateau Indian students in grades 7-12 between 2001 and
2004 in two reservation schools. These documents are examined in
comparison to an extensive historical archive of Plateau Indian texts
dating back to 1855. Using an elaborate qualitative theoretical
framework that draws primarily on critical discourse analysis, Monroe
determines that, taken as a whole, this body of texts does indeed
contain an internal continuity and coherence that represents a
distinct and continuously evolving system of Plateau Indian
rhetorical practices. Monroe recognizes that such a project risks
essentializing her subjects; she responds that “isolating key
features of any rhetoric always entails, to a certain degree, making
it hold still for a moment in order to pinpoint and describe those
features” (20-21).

Monroe argues that
Plateau Indians’ rhetorical practices are directly at odds with the
conventions typically taught as integral to standard academic
discourse. Plateau Indian students are thus confronted with writing
pedagogies that not only place them at a clear disadvantage, but also
invalidate their identities and home cultures. Monroe calls for new
pedagogical approaches that honor Plateau Indians’ rhetorical
sovereignty—a concept first advanced by Scott Lyons (Leech Lake
Ojibwe), who also provides the Foreword for this book. Kristin L.
Arola (Anishinaabe) affirms this ideal in an Afterword.

Through analysis of
an Indian student’s rap poem, Chapter One explores foundational
issues of authenticating Indian identity. A key to the book, Chapter
Two lays out four key features of Plateau Indian rhetoric. A close
look at two may suffice to clearly represent the book’s core
argument. A grounding principle for Monroe is Robert Kaplan’s
notion that questions of who is authorized to speak to whom on what
topics in what manners are answered in often profoundly different
ways by different cultures, thereby rendering cross-cultural
communication fraught and problematic (21). As criteria for
persuasive evidence, for example, Monroe argues that Plateau Indians
deploy and privilege “experiential knowledge,” usually conveyed
in a first person narrative of something the rhetor directly
witnessed or experienced. Monroe observes: “Therein lies the
cultural conflict: with its foundations in classical rhetoric,
academic discourse generally discounts, if not disallows,
experience-based support on grounds that such support is subjective
and therefore unreliable” (23).

Another Plateau
Indian rhetorical principle that diverges from standard academic
discourse involves a tendency to organize evidence with a “Suspended
Thesis/Suspenseful Arrangement,” a practice that Eurowestern
audiences may mistakenly regard as lacking coherence or cohesiveness.
“The larger argument itself is not necessarily recursive,” Monroe
writes; “[w]hat is recursive is the return to story to
develop pieces of argument” (29). This feature obviously marks
another consequential divergence from standardized academic
discourse, which demands a linear, thesis-driven arrangement. Monroe
notes that, historically, Eurowestern analysts have used this feature
of Indian rhetoric as a basis for false conclusions about cognitive
deficiency. (Monroe acknowledges Kaplan’s involvement with this
problem through his problematic 1966 “squiggles” essay [29].) It
must be recognized, Monroe urges, that “arrangement—and its
constitutive kinfolk, coherence and cohesion—is both logical and
not logical, depending not on audience or even discourse but on
discursive community, whose interpretive strategies are bounded by
values that make the community cohere as a community in the first
place” (31).

Other principles
Monroe describes include elements of “High Affect,” which
“re-create” in writing “an oral experience” through the use
of underlining, all-capitals, and other means (26), and “Situated
Elaboration/Selective Detail,” or the range from silence to
volubility—another factor sometimes wrongly linked to cognitive
ability—along with stipulations for appropriate topics (33).
Monroe’s larger argument is that this collection of rhetorical
practices is part of a broader rhetorical system that has been
internalized by Plateau Indians, who must contend in school with
writing pedagogies that tell them that these practices are wrong.
Frustration ensues for teachers and students alike, but for the
Indian students this problem is even more deeply consequential
because it invalidates their culture, identities, and capabilities.

Monroe’s efforts
to historicize Plateau Indian rhetoric, and thereby establish its
coherence and continuity, takes up a substantial portion of the book,
comprising Chapters Three through Five. Chapter Three goes back to
the nineteenth century and examines the transcribed proceedings of a
series of treaty negotiations between Plateau Indian leaders and US
government officials in 1855 and follow-up sessions in 1870. Monroe
quotes all or part of several Indian speeches and demonstrates how
they “share common discursive moves” in line with the distinctive
rhetorical system she mapped in Chapter Two (45). To get a sense of
the remarkable rhetorical complexity of these circumstances, consider
that as many as two thousand Indians were in attendance at one
session, in Walla Walla, and at least four languages were in play,
including several dialects. Monroe argues that this “language
pluralism and frequent contact may have actually predicated rather
than precluded the development of shared communicative competence”
(45). While the analysis of texts in translation of course raises
questions about authenticity and representation, Monroe points out
that the circumstances necessitated awareness and accommodation of
these problems, and the record indeed shows great concern and
discussion of accuracy in translation. Further, Monroe argues that
broader rhetorical moves like the ones she’s tracing are less
likely to be lost in translation than issues like diction and syntax.

Covering 1910-1921,
Chapter Four examines what Monroe calls, “a dark period of critical
transitions from oral to written communications, and from ancestral
language to English, giving rise to Plateau Indian English” against
the backdrop of Allotment, a US effort to basically disintegrate
Indian nations and parcel out Indian land to individuals (76).
Drawing in part on texts compiled in the
Lucullus
Virgil McWhorter Papers, Monroe traces Plateau Indians sustaining
their distinctive rhetorical practices through their use of writing,
not only in a Western language, but also in Western genres, including
telegrams, petitions, letters-to-the-editor, and legal briefs. In
these vibrant documents, we see Plateau Indians using writing to
pursue their national interests, engaging with issues like water
rights, hunting and fishing rights, alcohol regulation, and the draft
prompted by World War I.

While much of the
book is concerned with texts in which Plateau Indians address
themselves to white authority figures, Chapter Five examines
intragroup interactions and centers on a series of tribal meetings
held on a Yakama reservation in 1955 and 1956. Interactional dynamics
that emerge from the proceedings, the chapter demonstrates, include
“continuity of discourse, affordances for confrontation, and
mechanisms for building consensus” (107). Monroe argues that these
elements illuminate “the expectations and experiences of persuasive
discourse that [Plateau Indian] students bring to the classroom” in
the 21st century (107).

Chapter Six restores
the focus to latter day Plateau Indian student writers, analyzing
their work as exemplars of the rhetorical principles articulated in
Chapter Two. In her seventh and final chapter, Monroe critiques ways
in which Achievement Gap discourse, with its language of deficiencies
and deficits, amounts to the continued colonization of Indian
cultures and identities. Late in Chapter Six, Monroe notes a
potentially problematic issue in that the rhetorical practices she
traces are “not in fact evident in most students’
writing at the tribal school. But when traditional influences do
occur, they do so dramatically” (155, emphasis in original).
Rather than invalidating her thesis, Monroe argues, this “variability
[. . .] supports the view that Plateau Indian rhetorical practices,
like identity, are multiple, relative to individual experience and
family education, among other factors” (155). I would add in
support of Monroe’s argument that the students are operating in an
environment that penalizes them if they employ these practices.

Altogether, Monroe
tells a strongly compelling story that situates Plateau Indian
students as not simply responding to assignments, but participating
in a long struggle in which they join their compatriots and forebears
in preserving their rhetorical sovereignty along with defending their
cultural, political, and economic autonomy.

This problem brings us to the question of critical importance at the
heart of the book: “When rhetorical worlds collide, how should
educators respond?” (xix). Monroe rightly notes that “models
based on deficiency and deficit, assimilation and accommodation”
are deeply flawed (xix). Instead, she argues, “faculty should seek
out points of cultural congruence, selecting methods, assignments,
and assessments where culturally marked norms converge rather than
collide, thereby giving all students the opportunity to succeed”
(xix). Monroe further asserts that “educators should honor American
Indians’ right to rhetorical sovereignty” (xix). While this
prescription is very much on target, and Monroe does include a
general discussion of praxis in the book’s closing pages, I would
still like to have seen more in the way of concrete specifics. An
appendix with a sampling of curricular materials that model the kind
of “cultural congruence” that might engage students more
productively would be useful—and in line with Monroe’s admirable
commitment in this book to actual students and classroom impacts.

In addition, I
wonder how exactly might the rhetorical features like the ones Monroe
enumerates be incorporated into that curriculum vis-à-vis standard
academic discourse? How would students be tasked and their work
evaluated according to those principles? Would the principles of
Plateau Indian rhetoric simply be accorded status as a valid
reference point, enabling students to be multi-rhetorical in a manner
comparable to being multi-lingual? Would some form of contact zone
pedagogy be employed?

Whatever forms the
incorporation of Plateau Indian rhetorics into writing projects and
classroom activity might take, it bears noting that Indian students
may not always be comfortable with the ways that their own cultures
might be referenced in school curricula. They certainly do not lack a
basis for such mistrust, given the long, fraught history on Indians’
mostly disastrous encounters with Eurowestern style education. (An
extensive
bibliography on this topic has been compiled by the Association
for Studies in American Indian Literature.) It must also be said that
non-Indian teachers in particular would need to be very conscientious
and careful in how they construct their authority. (Monroe, by the
way, notes in sentence one of Chapter One that she is non-Indian; I
too am non-Indian.)

As noted above, the
basic problems Monroe grapples with in this book are pervasive in
American multi-ethnic classrooms. Indeed, all or portions of this
book would be well worth assigning to teachers in any stage of
training or professional development, not only to help them avoid
ethnocentrism, but also to demonstrate the value of empathy and
building on student strengths. The book’s own greatest strength may
be evinced in Monroe’s efforts to understand Plateau Indian writing
on its own terms. Here again, as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngati Awa,
Ngati Porou) and others have pointed out, such research must be
handled with careful and well-considered motives that ensure that
those studied will benefit rather than suffer further colonization.
Monroe offers a model of engaging Indian writing with honor and
respect. Plateau Indian Ways With Words rightly suggests that
working out how we might better teach such students entails figuring
out how we might better learn from them.